Telltale's recent episodic game The Walking Dead has been garnering much well-deserved praise from both press and players alike. Set in the same universe as Robert Kirkman's comic book series of the same name, the two episodes released thus far have done spectacularly well in keeping with the tone of the source material, paying homage while simultaneously leaving their own distinct mark on the universe and its mythos. Yet for how good the game's characters are, how well-written and delivered its dialogue is, and how beautiful its painterly art style is, I'm not going to focus on any of that here. You can read about all of that in most any review of the game. Instead, I want to look at The Walking Dead's use of time - more specifically, the player's time - and how Telltale treats it throughout the game.

There's a central concept in economics known as opportunity cost. In short, opportunity cost describes the loss one suffers upon choosing between mutually exclusive actions, specifically, the loss of the next most valuable alternative from the one chosen. When given a choice between the mutually exclusive actions A and B, by selecting B, one forfeits A and all of its potential value, and that lost value is measured as one's opportunity cost. While few choices in life inherently seem so prohibitive, locking us out of any and all alternatives just by virtue of making one decision, the opposite is actually true. Every decision we make has an inherent opportunity cost once time is factored into the equation. From mundane tasks like drinking coffee to serious investments like romantic ventures, by performing any one action at any given time, we forfeit the pursuit of any and all alternatives at that same time. I can't stop for coffee and walk to class simultaneously; I need to make a choice between the two. The question we ask ourselves at such crossroads is this: which is the better use of my time, and what will I be forfeiting in choosing either option?

As with anything else in life, opportunity cost applies to video games and how we as players make decisions pertaining to them. We decide which gameplay experiences are more valuable to us at any given time and forfeit any and all other lesser experiences by selecting one game to play. Most developers seem to understand this to an extent; players can only choose to play one game at any given time, and it's their prerogative as developers to ensure that their game is that one. However, what Telltale has proven with The Walking Dead is that their understanding of this concept goes much deeper than that of the average developer. They understand not only the exclusivity of the player's time, but also what exactly it is that their players value in an interactive Walking Dead experience. To see how Telltale shines in this capacity, let's first see how another may falter in the same endeavor.

Marching steadily towards mediocrity

Take Activision's recently announced The Walking Dead first-person shooter for example. Despite having little to no information about the game outside of its developer Terminal Reality's pedigree, I think we still have enough to make an assumption or two about what the game will likely entail, particularly with regards to its use of time. Given that the studio's most notable games were within the BloodRayne series, I would be shocked if their version of The Walking Dead varied much from FPS conventions. I expect to see monster closets, wave defense, corridor shooting, and some minor stealth or survival mechanics to cover themselves when presenting the finished product to series fans. It will likely be a competent first-person shooter from what I can surmise, but beyond its use of the Dixon brothers as protagonists, there doesn't seem to be much at all connecting the game to The Walking Dead universe specifically.

Players will spend their time doing all the aforementioned shooter-type things, but none of those things are really what The Walking Dead is "about," are they? Though both the show and the comics feature death and violence prominently, it's the human interest angle that hooks most people in, as most of the best zombie apocalypse stories do. People pick up every issue, tune in every week, to see not another zombie get killed, but how the outbreak is affecting the survivors, how the survivors are interacting with one another, and how they are coping with themselves. Players looking for the quintessential Walking Dead experience are more interested in spending their time exploring these aspects of the world than simply shooting at hordes of zombies with a crossbow. This is one of the things Telltale understands about The Walking Dead, and they've been putting that knowledge to good use, constructing what will quite possibly become the quintessential Walking Dead experience should the remaining three episodes stay par for the course.

Already we see Telltale's firm grasp of their source material with The Walking Dead coming to light in the two episodes released thus far, though that understanding extends beyond simply what kinds of experiences players will have. Telltale seems to be subscribing faithfully to the tenant of "quality over quantity," and from my perspective, adhering to that mantra seems to be working beautifully for them. Playing through even the first episode, one can already tell that much of the experience's fat has been cut out. There are very few moments when nothing of significance is happening, instead jettisoning the player through the story's beats all the way until the To Be Continued screen, much like an episode of the show would. Even during the downtime on the farm or in the store, the player has the opportunity to gather supplies and delve into the lives of Lee's fellow survivors, strengthening or weakening the social bonds between them all the while. At virtually every moment, Telltale provides the player with at least one central tenant of the quintessential Walking Dead experience, meaning that not only is it an incredibly dense game, it's a game that treats the player's time as sacrosanct. The Walking Dead FPS will likely take far more liberties with the player's time, sending them towards aimless objectives and subjecting them to set pieces which will bear no significance on the game's narrative itself. This only being the case to ensure that the experience lasts at least six hours in total. Such is the way of most first-person shooters, and Terminal Reality likely won't deviate from this tradition.

Innovation?

In fact, most high-profile developers would likely not deviate from this tradition in crafting a Walking Dead game, regardless of their genre of choice. There's a pervasive mentality in game development that treats time as its own entity, wholly separate from content. A game's length alone can often be seen as a selling point for some games, and audiences and critics alike will often berate games if their campaigns fall below a certain number of hours. For many, time in games is yet another unit used to measure a game's value, with more time equaling more value. After all, at such relatively high prices for singular pieces of entertainment, looking to get one's money's worth is understandable. However, while I sympathize with those who don't wish to pay sixty dollars for a one-hour experience, ultimately I think this is the wrong demand to make of our games. Rather than asking for longer games, we should instead be asking for games that treat the time we invest in them more preciously. With regards to our time and how we use it, we should be asking for quality over quantity.

The video game industry is steadily approaching a point in time when there will be an established and formidable market for adult players, a market that will require its own strategies in developing for. Those of us born in the late 80s and the early 90s, those of us who grew up playing video games not as a childhood pastime, but as a hobby one could viably sustain for years, are finally starting to enter society. We are starting to take on the commitments and responsibilities rightfully expected of us by our peers. We're studying at universities, working full-time jobs, and starting families. We're taking on the next stages of our lives, but every stage takes more and more of our time in kind. No longer do we have the luxuries of week-long vacations or summer breaks, snow days or half-days; at least forty of our waking hours are lost to us every week, and coming to this realization often causes many to reevaluate how they use what precious little time they have left.

Throughout these tumultuous times, however, our desire to play games has remained strong. While some of us may be content with the occasional Angry Birds session on the bus into work, those of us who grew up with the likes of Black Isle's games still want to play titles of substance, even if our schedules aren't conducive to playing games like Skyrim or Disgaea, at least not to the extent that we used to. As a result, adult video game players typically go down one of two paths in consuming games: either we only play a small selection of games to their completion at a time, forfeiting the immediate experiences of playing any other games released during that time, or we leave a litany of games left unfinished in our wake, consuming as many gameplay experiences as possible so as not to fall behind the times. Having walked down both paths, I can say with certainty that neither group is wholly satisfied with their gaming habits, always feeling they are missing out on other experiences, that their opportunity cost is too high.

Though this was worth every second

Enter Telltale and The Walking Dead. After all five episodes are said and done, the entire run-time of this twenty-some-dollar game will likely break the ten-hour mark. While this could be considered long for some genres like shooters or puzzlers, it's incredibly short for any sort of role-playing game, yet it still manages to pack as much narrative content into that ten-hour window as many RPGs do in their entire eighty. It's a game so dense that one's opportunity cost in playing it feels almost negligible. The amount of time it takes away from other games is short, and that short time is filled with virtually nothing but significant moments, creating a gameplay experience that never feels padded-down with filler or fluff. Everything happens for a reason in The Walking Dead, and when you compare the sheer value of that experience to games with set pieces that are only there for their own sakes, games that require countless hours of ammo and item farming, games that have you fighting off seemingly infinite waves of enemies, it's kind of hard to go back.

When I was younger, I would become furious with those who complained that games were too long. The very idea simply didn't compute in my adolescent brain. The whole point of video games, in my mind, was to kill as much of my abundant free time as possible. Now that I lack that luxury, however, I understand these people's plight, though I think their true sentiment is actually somewhat different from what they say. For us older players, those of us now with substantial commitments to schools, jobs, or families, games don't actually need to be shorter. RPGs don't need to only have twenty hours of content apiece. Shooters can still be longer than five hours. No, instead of shorter games, what we need are denser games, games that give us more for our time, not simply more for our money. Telltale's The Walking Dead is a great step in this direction, and I only hope that developers in other genres begin following suit.

In IGN's official review for the PSN-exclusive SRPG Rainbow Moon, reviewer Colin Moriarty stressed the quality of the game's combat mechanics perhaps more so than any of the game's other aspects. Despite having a solid visual aesthetic and a fine soundtrack, the gameplay still took precedence, casting its shadow even over the game's narrative. According to the review, "the plot of Rainbow Moon is simple and, like many old-school RPGs, largely unimportant," and that "Rainbow Moon emphasizes mechanics and gameplay far more than plot." It seems as though in the mind of the reviewer, the game's more redeeming qualities, primarily its gameplay, saved the experience from mediocrity, rewarding Rainbow Moon an 8.0. While everyone is entitled to his or her opinion in the discussion of the arts, I want to look at what exactly it means to value gameplay either more highly than narrative or to such an extent that it may overshadow narrative, the role gameplay has in both video games and other activities, and what such a value system entails for those players who adhere to it.

Gameplay, the interactive element unique to gaming, that which separates it from all other media, is surely an integral aspect of any video game, and no developer should treat it as anything less than vitally important when creating a game. Many of the first video games were almost solely gameplay, using visuals and audio only as necessary to convey their players' actions to them. Pong is a prime example of this, using only the most basic of blips, dots, and lines to convey the actions happening behind the scenes in the game's code to the player, representing a game of table tennis. Pong has virtually no narrative to speak of. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end to the game, and actions transpire throughout all three stages, but these actions are not interesting from the perspective of narrative. Rather, the actions in pong are interesting in the same way that those in sports are, or at least can be: there is a struggle between two opposing parties and both participants and spectators alike become invested in determining who will be the victor in this struggle. There are no narrative devices, no archetypes, no metaphors; it's simply a carnal appreciation for one party besting another, be it physically or mentally.

Most competitive online games have the same appeal. From Counter Strike to Starcraft, these games don't focus on narrative elements in their online play but rather let our inherent fascination with conflict facilitate our own interest in the game's events. Valuing gameplay above all else in these types of games is all but expected as there is little else to value. While the popularity of individual titles within this type of game is undoubtedly based additionally on visual and auditory polish, it's largely the games with the most enticing gameplay that rise to the top, games with mechanics which are easily accessible by newcomers yet deep enough for veteran players to still make discoveries even after years playing.

A friendly bit of sport, old chap

But this leads me to one of my main concerns with focusing primarily on gameplay when evaluating games. With only a few notable exceptions, Starcraft and Counter Strike being among those few, even the most tournament-friendly of games are rarely played much past two or three years before all of their respective sequels are released, prompting the games' communities at large to leave the originals for dead. You see this perhaps most commonly with sports games, ironically enough, with almost every series on a yearly release schedule. Unlike the sports these games base themselves off of, the gameplay in these games can vary drastically from year to year, meaning that even if a player remembers all the rules of soccer from one year to the next, they may still have a rough time moving from Fifa 10 to Fifa 11. In contrast, the sport of soccer itself is seen by many as a hallowed tradition, remaining largely unchanged over its lifespan save the occasional tweak or modification, meaning that one could play a match ten years after last doing so and still have a solid grasp of the basic gameplay. Fifa 10 players fade away fast with each subsequent release, but soccer players play their game for life.

The same problem can be seen in the fighting game community. Though tournaments still exist for older titles in some series, as the years go by, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike tournaments will become more and more rare, eventually forcing players to move on to another installment in the Street Fighter series, an installment which will have a radically different feel and play style from SFIII, in order for them to still be a part of the Street Fighter community.

If one were to value gameplay above all things in game design, doesn't this seem problematic? It appears as though the industry as a whole doesn't really care to facilitate players' prolonged exploration of their games' gameplay, instead relying on this early-adoption mentality of these games' communities to turn a considerable profit with each year's release of Madden or Call of Duty. Despite working well for publishers and developers, this instability means that there will never truly be a definitive gameplay experience for any of these series. No one NCAA Basketball game will be the be-all, end-all entry in the series, meaning that players won't realistically be able to devote the same level of attention in learning an NCAA Basketball game's mechanics as a player or fan of real-life college basketball would. Taking the time to learn the intricacies of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom simply doesn't provide one with the same investment as taking the time to learn the intricacies of Go. Go is a game that has survived centuries and is played by millions of players worldwide. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a game that was relatively successful and enjoyed some popularity in Japan around the time of its release but failed utterly to find a foothold here in the west. Even in Japan, the game's lifespan was short, meaning that players' time and effort into learning the intricacies of the game's mechanics only yielded a year or so of substantial play. Sure, no one is preventing TvC fans from popping the game back into their systems and putting their knowledge of Yatterman-1's moves' frame counts, but that's no longer relevant knowledge to other _______ vs. Capcom players, meaning that it's knowledge no one cares about anymore. It doesn't prevent TvC players from enjoying themselves with their preferred game of the series, but the industry and the community have long since moved on from that game and its gameplay.

As enticing as dealing 8.635 billion damage can be...

Rainbow Moon isn't like these games, though. It's not a video game analogue for sport. It's a wholly single-player experience centered around a slightly modified form of the classic grid-based SRPGs of old. The conflict takes place entirely between the player and the game itself, using the appeal of personal gain and progress, as well as what wafer-thin a narrative it may have, to propel the player through the experience. If the plot is truly as dull as Colin Moriarty would have us believe (and in full disclosure, I believe him when he says it is), it seems that personal gain and progress are the only two props propelling players through the game's uncharted waters. But I ask you: what exactly does this pursuit of progress and gain for their own sakes get us? When we've acquired the best gear and leveled up our characters to one hundred, what are we left with? Psychologically, we're left with our memories of the experience and an overall sense of satisfaction and achievement. We put in those hours to get those items, to get those characters to where they are. Us and us alone. It's certainly a gratifying feeling, but what are we left with really? What has all that time and effort actually gone into? Ostensibly, all we've achieved throughout our experience is increasing a few numbers. Damage output: increased. Hit points: increased. Chance to evade: increased. That's about it.

Players may enjoy their experience with the game, and they may even feel that such an experience was worth the amount of time and effort they poured into that game. But at the end of the day, the only thing players have to show from delving deep into the gameplay of Rainbow Moon is a proficiency in the gameplay of Rainbow Moon. Much like mastering Spider Solitaire, mastering Rainbow Moon is a feat that bears little to no importance outside of the game itself. Because the game isn't competitive like Starcraft or Counter Strike, there is no way to test one's mettle in the gameplay of Rainbow Moon against others. Because the game is a linear single-player experience, talking about the game to other Rainbow Moon players would likely be as bland as the game's own narrative, subjecting oneself to person after person regaling how long it took them to level their characters up to one hundred. Because the game has no substantial narrative, one takes away nothing from the experience other than an arguably empty sense of satisfaction and a deeper understanding only of how to play the game itself. While I'm an ardent supporter of the theory that the evaluation of art is entirely subjective exercise, doesn't this seem almost objectively undesirable, at least when compared to their narrative-based counterparts?

Taking the time to learn the intricacies of Rainbow Moon doesn't provide one with the same investment as taking the time to learn the intricacies of even other SRPGs like Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Let's assume for a moment that both games require the exact same amount of time and effort from players in order to be completed, and that the caliber of each game's gameplay is identical. After both experiences, players are left with an ostensibly empty sense of satisfaction and a deeper understanding of how to play both games. However, Disgaea additionally provides the player a narrative to follow, one with its own quirky charms and endearing Japanese idiosyncrasies that tips the scale in Disgaea's favor when comparing the two games' sheer values with respect to time and effort. Simply put, Disgaea offers everything Rainbow Moon does while adding something more.

Doood

To go one step further, SRPGs with branching narratives like Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together add yet another layer of value to the experience by incorporating the game's narrative into its gameplay. This allows players to dictate the events of the story and to experience the consequences of their actions and decisions throughout, providing a level of influence that may additionally help combat the emptiness of the satisfaction one feels when completing SRPGs. Beyond simply increasing various number values, beyond experiencing a static plot with each playthrough, the game gives the player the power to influence the events of its story, to flex their agency within its fictional world, to decide who lives and dies. Every battle is more than a game of turn-based combat between the player and the computer, more than a trial necessary to complete in order to unlock the next bit of plot. Because of the player's influence over the game's narrative, every battle becomes a struggle to see one's plans come to fruition, to see how one's decisions influence the world around them, and completing the game becomes that much more rewarding accordingly. It's a kind of rewarding that simply isn't possible in a game without narrative focus of any kind, a kind that can never be present in games that focus primarily on gameplay rather than narrative.

Games without narrative can certainly be enjoyable. In fact, some of the best mobile games are without narrative, but they provide fun and engaging experiences nonetheless. However, it's important to note the clear difference between games like Angry Birds which are intended to only be played in short intervals and SRPGs which can require anywhere from tens to hundreds of hours of playtime to complete. One plays Angry Birds for the enjoyment of the experience itself and the small feeling of accomplishment one gets after beating a personal high score on a stage. It's an endeavor one can easily justify spending the occasional minute or two pursuing as the cost of one's time is reasonably proportional to what one gets psychologically and emotionally out of the experience. If games like Rainbow Moon yield little more than those same sensations of fun and accomplishment but at one hundred time the price in time and effort, is it worth it by comparison? Is playing a game like Rainbow Moon simply for its gameplay worth all your time, money when Angry Birds does just as well at a fraction of the cost? That's admittedly up to each and every one of us to decide for ourselves, but I know that personally, I want a little more bang for my buck.

Of course you do. The Dead Island trailer that shook the world, this 4 minute video sent ripples throughout the gaming community, sparking controversy, fostering speculation, and providing hope. Finally, for all the die-hard fans of the undead, there seemed to be a game on the horizon which wouldn’t sugarcoat the experience of Z-Day. From the trailer alone, Dead Island was looking to be both one of the most serious portrayals of a zombie outbreak we’ve ever seen in games, and one of the most personally-affecting games of any genre. Seeing this family become overrun by zombies one by one, with each member witnessing in horror the infection and devouring of their beloveds, was disturbing to say the least. If Techland was willing to be that brutal, both physically and emotionally, in a trailer, it was hard to imagine what they had in store for the game itself.

Thankfully, Techland quickly dispelled any of our speculations and concerns suggesting that the game would be serious, innovative, or emotionally affecting. A short while after the trailer was released, the first gameplay details surfaced. Oh, it’s going to be a sandbox game? Great! First person? That must mean it’s immersive! Customizable weapons? Alright, I guess that’s something you can do in a zombie apocalypse. Vehicle combat? Wait, I thought this was on an island. Skill trees? Experience points? Zombie “classes”? Sam f*cking B?

Techland has assured us that you won’t be playing as any of the family members in the trailer, so don’t worry about getting emotionally attached to the child, or to the wife, or to the husband. All those feelings may get in the way of what really matter: points. There will also be no children in the game, contrary to what the trailer may have you believe. So if you were looking forward to rescuing some defenseless children from zombie hordes in (on?) Dead Island, well too bad. It’s for your sense of fun’s sake that you can’t, so blame it, not Techland. It isn’t their fault that video games are only supposed to be fun. Plus it might have seemed a little insensitive giving players points for shooting undead children, so apparently all the children who would have been zombified were sent on a vacation from their actual vacation which their mommies and daddies secretly knew was going to be a zombie-infested nightmare. If this isn’t making sense to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

When I first saw the Dead Island trailer, my immediate reaction was that of excitement. After another viewing, it was of intrigue and speculation. My third time through was when the burnout started. It slowly dawned on me that such a game, as promised by the trailer, had little to no chance of being made. The dark, gritty, emotional zombie game would alienate a sizable portion of the already reduced constituency of gamers who like zombie games. Some players think that a good zombie game is something like CoD:BlOps or Left 4 Dead, simply for the sheer mindless fun of beheading zombie after countess zombie via shotgun or katana. Others, those who are more likely to call themselves “hardcore” zombie fans, prefer a more survival horror approach to their zombie games, reveling in the tension of always having one less bullet than you need in games like the original Resident Evils. It’s this latter group who would swarm to the game Techland was promising in the trailer, but this almost masochistic breed of gamers is a rare one indeed (for reasons I won’t get into now in the interest of relevancy). And unfortunately, most companies aren’t willing to risk catering to such niche markets, especially not if they’re nested within a group which is already on the small side of things.

But fear not, fellow zedheads: I didn’t completely lose faith. I saw, shining brightly just beyond the horizon, a game which could very well be considered the most artistic and affecting zombie game ever yet made. What game is this, you might ask, and why wasn’t it flown down from the heavens, resting atop a bed of clouds, accompanied by the holy songs of cherubim? Well, I’ll tell you.

The bastion of zombie greatness I’m referring to is the one, the only: Dead Rising 2. Now before you get all uppity (though I’m sure you will anyway), let me explain myself. For starters, I’ll gladly admit that the Dead Rising series has its faults: poor shooting mechanics, the overall cheesiness (chainsaw-motorcycles, anyone?), ridiculous boss fights, etc. Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 are by no means perfect games. And yes, I understand that they’re full of everything I previously bashed Dead Island for having, from experience points to zombie classes, weapon-crafting to vehicle combat. But while I may find some aspects of the Dead Rising series to be less than satisfactory, I feel that as a whole, they’re moving in the right direction for zombie games. Not in their gameplay mechanics, not in their characters or narratives, but in their structure and their sense of agency.

When I first played the original Dead Rising, it was alongside a friend at my his house and, like many players, we simply ignored the missions. Killing zombies was far too much fun to be bothered by a plot, especially a lackluster one at that. However, when I bought a copy of DR2 for myself, I actually gave the missions a shot. I mean, if I’m going to pay 60 bucks, I might as well check out the work put into the story and whatnot by the developer. At first, I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d be able to cope with the game’s infamous timed mission structure; it was a big reason why I didn’t even bother with the story in the first game, and I usually don’t do well with countdowns in games. But after a while, I got the hang of it. Not only that, I started to really appreciate the timed structure, contrary to my previous annoyance with it. It provided some truly revelatory moments for me during my playthrough, forcing me to make surprisingly difficult decisions against the clock. Do I have time to save this person? Two missions are about to expire, who do I save? Do I really want to risk dying at the hands of this boss just to save someone?

Here’s a shining example of one such moment: I had some downtime in between two actual story missions, so I decided to go rescue some schmuck stuck on top of a kiosk in the food court (or something like that). I was just about to enter the mall proper when all of a sudden I get a message for a mission titled Code Blue. Apparently, somewhere in the mall there was a paramedic who would be willing to part with a dosage of Zombrex if he was saved. As soon as I read that, almost without thinking, I switched my waypoint and started heading towards the paramedic, completely abandoning the man in the food court. I made the decision to help the man who could help me. Screw the other guy, at least for the moment. At that point, I was willing to abandon the man in the food court, leaving him to be food for the horde, all because I didn’t stand to gain as much from his rescue as I did the paramedic’s. When I caught myself doing this, finally realizing the gravity of the decision I had just made, I actually had to pause the game and think to myself, “what does this say about me?”

This sense of agency is all but absent in virtually every other zombie game series, except for (in a sense) maybe the Left 4 Dead games. Take Resident Evil for example: while most titles in the series are by no means on rails, the decisions the player can make have little to no consequence in the games’ narratives. All of the player’s actions are focused solely on personal survival and the continuation of the plot. While these decisions often have to be made in the heat of the moment, creating a tense, thrilling experience, it’s far from an emotionally affecting one. What the Dead Rising games give the player are choices that effect not only themselves, but also the world around them. And while it’s stressful making a tactical decision like whether to increase the clip size or the damage on your Red 9, it’s far more engaging emotionally choosing who you’ll attempt to save and who you’ll regretfully have to leave behind.

Player choice, the theme that seems now to be recurrent in most of my critiques, is what makes games great. It’s that interactivity, that bond between developer and player, that makes video games truly unique as a medium. The problem, it seems, is that too many games only give their players negligible choices. They may aid in the player’s progression through the story, but they’re ultimately arbitrary. And while still full of arbitrary decisions, the Dead Rising series is, at the very least, introducing some that are not. This is a big step in the right direction to be sure, and it’s mainly for this reason that I applaud the series and its efforts. However, there’s still a considerable amount of content that holds it back from truly being the quintessential zombie experience (www.qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-rising-2.jpg).

You may be asking yourself, “okay, if no game has yet to deliver a realistic zombie experience, not even your precious Dead Rising series, what would it take for a game to actually live up to such a high standard?” My answer to you is this: go back and re-watch that Dead Island trailer. Go read the initial previews for the game, and just imagine what an open world, first-person zombie game with THAT trailer would entail. There’s your perfect zombie game. An immersive, open-world game with the survivalist intensity of Resident Evil mixed with the player agency of Dead Rising (amplified to an even greater extent, of course), all while having the arcady fat gutted out of the experience. No experience points, no bosses, no classes; just you and your fellow survivors, fighting off the horde while either waiting for extraction or searching for a cure. Throw in some of the co-op dynamics of the Left 4 Dead series for good measure, and you’ve got, more or less, one fine, realistic zombie experience that marries the down-to-the-last-bullet tension of classic survival horror with the emotional weight and camaraderie of player-player and player-npc interaction.

At least that’s my two cents. Obviously this idea isn’t fleshed out at all, and there are a litany of unanswered questions one could ask about it, but that’s the general overview of my perfect zombie game. I’m sure there are those out there who will disagree with my vision or have even better ideas than mine (I know many people would like to see a zombie mmo, which I think could also work rather well if handled properly). So how about, if you could design your perfect zombie game, how would you handle it?